How Can We Stop the Rising Poverty?

Some rights reserved by John Steven FernandezYou might be Republican or Democrat, a liberal or conservative, but you can’t be blind and deaf to the recent figures found in the Record Number of Americans in Poverty. No matter the cantankerous relationships that are stalling any new jobs plan or talking about ending entitlements like Social Security and Disability, it is time to face the ever-growing poverty numbers in our country and worst, the ever-deepening cavern of its severity.

Reagan’s trickledown theory that government has clung to solve economic inequity has failed and poverty grows each day. Should we blame poor people? Should we blame social issues? Should we blame drugs and single-parent homes? Should we blame the education system or welfare? In fact, we have used all of these to blame poor people and enacted legislation to address each area in the hope we could fix and solve poverty.  

Regardless of the new fixation, by both parties, the numbers grow and the people in poverty continue to grow poorer. Regardless of the racial background, all groups grew in poverty rates to 1 in 10 whites and 1 in 4 African Americans and Hispanic persons. Women are more likely than men to be in poverty while children are barely protected with food stamps and housing assistance. Poverty in America is a problem so large and so baffling that we read the same article each year with ever-growing numbers offering only examples of poverty, and never solutions.

I want to offer solutions so more and more people can have lunch and share in a conversation with optimism. Feel free to add to the list to help end poverty in America. If we can do this here, then we can do it everywhere and change the concept of a living wage while increasing the quality of life.

Howard Lake1) We can end district schooling and enforce state economic equality in the schools. You can have only so many rich people and middle class.

2) Paying people to attend school. You can give them a livable wage so they can afford rent, food and clothing and improve their prospects of employment.

3) Supplement incomes above poverty level standards for all people who make less than it a year. This may put the onus on the government to raise minimum wage to a place where a person can exist in our economy or create innovative state jobs that will help America.

4)  Increase common farms or state funded farms that will provide ample fresh food, provide jobs, and reshape the urban landscape.

When one discusses the “poverty” problem in America, it has the ability to alienate the middle class. Any attempt to raise the poverty level is seen as lowering the middle class life style. The reality is the middle class life style is slipping. The middle class has more invested in improving the lives and futures of people in poverty because their economic lag creates higher taxes in local and state services.

We cannot judge life's qaulity by a financial number. We should judge a life by happiness and poverty doesn’t mean sadness. But it often means violence plagued living conditions, lack of nutrition, dangerous life styles, high mortality rates, low education levels, and high unemployment.  Job plans, like President Obama’s recent proposal, must help the poor obtain employment in the hope of addressing long-term unemployment and the rising poverty levels. The numbers in the above article and the recent Associated Press piece is a blemish on us all. Poverty is increasing and we must address it. We must have opportunities to rise from poverty and we must have the numbers drop. If we can, maybe I won’t be so sick to my stomach when I read next year’s numbers.